Trans-Financial-Man
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2018
- Messages
- 1,006
tl/dr: Publishers are emotionally manipulating shill media.
I've been thinking about this a while. This may come off as obvious to a lot of you who are more hip and with it when it comes to the Access Media circle jerk but a lot of people have a weird confusion or misunderstand why these people shill for mediocre stuff. Here's my theory.
I have in my time, worked as a game dev back in 1997. I only worked in it for about a year and a half. If you can call occasionally submitting levels made in DoomEd work whilst we smoked Weed and threw paper clips at each other. It was paid so hey ho. For that time I noticed something, our boss was a young guy with his Mum's milk still wet on his face and he had the bright idea to exploit the basement dwelling Morloks of the World Wide Web. If you know your gaming history you'll know id Software and Apogee both did this on BBS services to demo and market their games, That wasn't a new idea. Here's the new idea.
There were what we would now call Influencers on a lot of BBS boards. People who kept popping up to talk about various aspects of Doom and Quake and all other games. Usually the people other people actually listened to were those who were good at the multiplayer side of things. My boss came up with the idea that these are the people we should jerk off instead of print media. Make them feel valued and like we the devs are friends to these people. Give them a tour of ourcloset office, take them out to dinner, pay for trips out on the town. Full wine & dine. The boss pitched this idea to me and the one other employee we had. We thought this was the dumbest load of wank ever. Who the fuck would want to listen to some retard on a forum shouting about our game? No one would be interested.
So that idea got shut down. Six months later we folded because our stupid boss got caught being a state benefits cheat using a self employment loophole. He was not a boy flush with charisma or good ideas but he was enough of a bastard to cotton on to an idea that the Big Publishing Bastards later came up with themselves.
Look at the likes of Jason Schrier.
In his interview with Yongyea he is quick to blame the consumer for every bad decision Big Publishing Bastards make. The comments of the video are flush with people confused at how “deluded” Schrier is. But let me tell you, I completely understand why he thinks the way he does. He has been treated like a friend. He's an influencer. Whilst his influence now is on the wane he has had access to all these friendly, upstanding devs. They show him all their “hard work”, maybe they sometimes give him some juicy gossip about work conditions. He sympathises with them. He's been let into the club. Behind the curtain. He's better than those stupid gamers because he knows things they don't. Those publishers and devs tell him everything and they even help him out by taking him to dinner or hanging out at a bar for drinks. Wow, why do gamers hate these guys? They're so nice.
This is all intentional by Big Publishing Bastards. They have pulled the wool over Schrier's eyes and given him a social contract. You are much less likely to see the negatives and criticise people you see as friends. In fact, you want your friends to do well. You want to support them. So why not use your influence to help them along and reward that hard work they're doing. The fact that you're helping along a faceless Triple AAA company doesn't register because they are showing Journalists like Schrier a mask. Usually represented through a personable PR rep. An illusion of casual personabilty. They like this. Journalists like being let into the club house where all their friends are. You don't want to get excluded do you? You'd end up like those gamers out there.
Now imagine all that being done to You Tubers. Sad people who's whole identity revolves around brands and validation. A publisher offers a look at the inside. Now you don't need to just be a fan. You can be an influencer. You get free tat. Paid trips to cons, a direct line to communicate with devs. And the publishers are just so awesome. They tell you how they love your content and it makes all the work they do worthwhile. How about exclusive early access to this thing you were looking forward to. We'll even give you a sponsorship deal. Oh don't worry you can still say what you want, but dude we worked so hard on this game. We're a diverse team of many people and by god we just want to do our best. Why don't we discuss this over drinks in the bar.
Social contract gets signed again. Influencers have "friends" in game dev. If you slag them off they might be forced to lay some friends off, or not make the sequel to that game you really like. But man it's a tough world and publishers are so grateful to you. You awesome dude here's another free shirt. By the way, this game deserves no less than an 8/10 but hey it's your review.
I've been thinking about this a while. This may come off as obvious to a lot of you who are more hip and with it when it comes to the Access Media circle jerk but a lot of people have a weird confusion or misunderstand why these people shill for mediocre stuff. Here's my theory.
I have in my time, worked as a game dev back in 1997. I only worked in it for about a year and a half. If you can call occasionally submitting levels made in DoomEd work whilst we smoked Weed and threw paper clips at each other. It was paid so hey ho. For that time I noticed something, our boss was a young guy with his Mum's milk still wet on his face and he had the bright idea to exploit the basement dwelling Morloks of the World Wide Web. If you know your gaming history you'll know id Software and Apogee both did this on BBS services to demo and market their games, That wasn't a new idea. Here's the new idea.
There were what we would now call Influencers on a lot of BBS boards. People who kept popping up to talk about various aspects of Doom and Quake and all other games. Usually the people other people actually listened to were those who were good at the multiplayer side of things. My boss came up with the idea that these are the people we should jerk off instead of print media. Make them feel valued and like we the devs are friends to these people. Give them a tour of our
So that idea got shut down. Six months later we folded because our stupid boss got caught being a state benefits cheat using a self employment loophole. He was not a boy flush with charisma or good ideas but he was enough of a bastard to cotton on to an idea that the Big Publishing Bastards later came up with themselves.
Look at the likes of Jason Schrier.
In his interview with Yongyea he is quick to blame the consumer for every bad decision Big Publishing Bastards make. The comments of the video are flush with people confused at how “deluded” Schrier is. But let me tell you, I completely understand why he thinks the way he does. He has been treated like a friend. He's an influencer. Whilst his influence now is on the wane he has had access to all these friendly, upstanding devs. They show him all their “hard work”, maybe they sometimes give him some juicy gossip about work conditions. He sympathises with them. He's been let into the club. Behind the curtain. He's better than those stupid gamers because he knows things they don't. Those publishers and devs tell him everything and they even help him out by taking him to dinner or hanging out at a bar for drinks. Wow, why do gamers hate these guys? They're so nice.
This is all intentional by Big Publishing Bastards. They have pulled the wool over Schrier's eyes and given him a social contract. You are much less likely to see the negatives and criticise people you see as friends. In fact, you want your friends to do well. You want to support them. So why not use your influence to help them along and reward that hard work they're doing. The fact that you're helping along a faceless Triple AAA company doesn't register because they are showing Journalists like Schrier a mask. Usually represented through a personable PR rep. An illusion of casual personabilty. They like this. Journalists like being let into the club house where all their friends are. You don't want to get excluded do you? You'd end up like those gamers out there.
Now imagine all that being done to You Tubers. Sad people who's whole identity revolves around brands and validation. A publisher offers a look at the inside. Now you don't need to just be a fan. You can be an influencer. You get free tat. Paid trips to cons, a direct line to communicate with devs. And the publishers are just so awesome. They tell you how they love your content and it makes all the work they do worthwhile. How about exclusive early access to this thing you were looking forward to. We'll even give you a sponsorship deal. Oh don't worry you can still say what you want, but dude we worked so hard on this game. We're a diverse team of many people and by god we just want to do our best. Why don't we discuss this over drinks in the bar.
Social contract gets signed again. Influencers have "friends" in game dev. If you slag them off they might be forced to lay some friends off, or not make the sequel to that game you really like. But man it's a tough world and publishers are so grateful to you. You awesome dude here's another free shirt. By the way, this game deserves no less than an 8/10 but hey it's your review.
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